Dan Brown's 'Lost Symbol' details local mystery

LANGLEY, Va. - Part of the new Dan Brown novel is based on a local mystery.

In the introduction to his new best-selling novel, "The Lost Symbol," author Dan Brown lists the following:

"In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today, its cryptic text includes references to an unknown location underground. The document ... includes the phrase, 'It's buried out there somewhere.'"

Brown says the 20-year-old document contains the answers to a 20-year-old mystery.

WTOP's National Security Correspondent J.J. Green investigated the claim, and found out it's true.

The document, a source at CIA says, was given to former CIA Director William Webster in 1991. It refers to a sculpture on the Langley campus which is discussed on the CIA's website.

According to the website, "Even the CIA's artwork has secrets. Kryptos, a sculpture at CIA headquarters, has baffled code crackers around the world with its secret message."

Kryptos is a wavy copper plate screen covered with about 1,800 encrypted characters next to a petrified tree. It has four panels and only three have been deciphered.

According to the CIA and public sources, the full message on the sculpture, which is not available to the public, has never been deciphered. The document in the safe contains the answers.

As far as the unknown underground location is concerned, the source says likely one of the pieces of the sculpture that lay partially buried underground on the campus that contains a part of the answer to the code.

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